Reviews for Bowers & Wilkins A7 AirPlay Wireless Music System

If you want great quality sound, this is the unit to purchase. Setting it up is not as easy as a bluetooth system would, but it was still fairly easy. For those people that have/had problems with skipping, look into your network/router settings or the strength of your wi-fi range.

Download the B&W Control app first and the whole set up should be done within 10 minutes or less. Updating the firmware is very easy as well. Download the update from B&W website and access device properties by right-clicking on it's icon in the network folder. This is obviously done using your PC/MAC.

One more thing, I do own other B&W speakers and they require their speakers to be broken in. I found this to be the same with my A7. Sound is flawless!!! Never once had a skipping problem.

Network: Verizon FIOS
Rouer: Actiotec

2 of 2 people found this useful

I am about to leave home to return the B&W A7 and am quite sad about having to do so. The sound is brilliant! Period! However, in a classic example of doing some things to perfection and ignoring other aspects of a device, the streaming is terrible. I am using a dual band router with wifi G and N compatibility. It is new and serves our condo extremely well. My iPhone and iPad are within ten feet of the speakers but they quit after 10 - 15 minutes of play and require a reconnect! We had three iPads in the condo this weekend and each of them experienced the same problem. Worse, instructions for the device are sorely lacking and there is nothing on the internet to help out. Even getting the plastic out of the remote in order to activate the battery was difficult. Why not put a slot in the battery cover to allow twisting instead of making one twist it through friction? This is not a new idea! Setup was easy except that there are virtually no instructions and if things don't go as expected, it takes a bit of technical knowledge to get the speakers working.
The first day we enjoyed endless music with hardly a "skip". However, the device will now quit entirely after 10 or so minutes of play and a manual reconnect is required.
Here's another "novel" idea B&W. Why not write software that allows updating through the internet? The speakers already have an ethernet connection so it would be easy to do so. That way we owners can update our software as improvements come along in much the same fashion that so many other electronic devices work these days.
Disappointed ... that's the word. I'll get something but it won't be a B&W speaker even though I believe they are one of the best. Their software is not up to the speaker standards and is very obviously their weakest point.

10 of 24 people found this useful

B&W is known for their balanced sound and they have managed to retain their signature sound in a small bookshelf speaker with the A7.

Before deciding on B&W I was interested in small footprint wireless speaker system with great sound. I looked at both bluetooth and wifi speakers, including Sonos. Bluetooth just does not have the sound due to bandwidth and speaker sizes on the market, and Sonos whilst offering a great solution sounds muffled. Bang of Olufsen has some interesting speakers on offer, however they are far more expensive and do not sound as balanced as B&W. I ended up comparing the A7 and McIntosh McAire. I did like the McAire but at 4x the price of the A7 it did not sound 4x much better, and it looked like a typical stereo where the A7 has a unobtrusive style.

Some people complain of the A7 only supporting 802.11g rather than n, I ended up running it via ethernet using powerline ethernet.

Apart from what appears to be some networking issues with TP-Link powerline gear (not related to B&W) and some minor bugs for Apple to sort out in Airplay the A7 provides a truly amazing sound for such a small footprint speaker.

3 of 3 people found this useful

The A7 sounds bigger and more palpable than the Zeppelin Air. I purchased an A7 Yesterday and from the first song I played there was a noticeable difference in sound.
I find that the A7 has a slightly wider soundstage with a little more depth into the music. During my comparison with the Zeppelin Air, I played several unplugged jazz songs. The Zeppelin Air managed to hold it's own in terms of dynamics and the delicate handling of vocals and upper mid range, but the A7 just seemed to do all of the above more accurately. It's surprising how B&W managed to take the same components and amplification of the Zeppelin Air and make it sound more lifelike. It bogles my mind how such big sound can come out of such a small box.

I would say that the extra $200.00 is worth it.

20 of 21 people found this useful

it's a nice speaker if you have a limited space. the sound is very good (mine sounded so so at first, but did get much better after a few days of breaking in). the base is good for a small speaker, but it does not sound like a big system like bose sounddock 10 does when you turn the volumn up. it's fuller sound than bose at low to mid volume. the airplay sometimes drops if there is any interference such as when my microwave is on.
it's a great speaker, but for the price i expected better.

16 of 25 people found this useful

Let me get down to the nuts and bolts of Things. Setting up the Airplay requires that you download an app and it takes at least 5 minutes or more to sync. The B&W sounds great but the Airplay does not have good range and will only steam music around 40 feet away without skipping and lagging. For $857 is should both sound good and stream music reliably. It seems B&W spent all there efforts on the acoustics side and very little time on the Airplay side. For a device that is designed to be portable and wireless I consider this a failure. You may be asking yourself maybe his wifi is not efficient enough to stream past 40 feet? My wifi has no trouble streaming music to my iPads, iPhones anywhere in my house or to my play stations that are at an equal distance as the A7 was or to my Apple TV and Samsung DA E750 which is located in the same location as the A7 used to be.

6 of 13 people found this useful

I had to modify my Wifi Password to get the A7 to connect. I am using Airport Extreme with all of the default settings, my problem was that I had special characters in the WPA2 password and initially had my SSID hidden. The resolution was to remove special characters (like # or !) and use letters (caps or not) and numbers and I made my SSID visible. Once I did these 2 steps, the A7 connected easily.

5 of 5 people found this useful

I just got this system about two weeks ago from my girlfriend. I own a small 500sft flat in HK, so I need to optimize every inch. Most of the premium hi-fi solutions out there require at least two tower speakers which eat up at least 2 ft x 5 ft floor space. A7 takes up 1.18 x 0.52 ft, a fraction and many cables replaced by the power & optical audio from TV. Simple and sexy. Sound is PHENOMENALLY BETTER than 99% of tower speaker systems out there. Avoiding audiophile lingo here, but key points:

• Vocals: crystal clear.
• Bass: deep, resilient without muffle. No drowning.
• Mids: rich and bountiful, timber heaven. (ex. Michael Buble)
• Trebles sparkle,never wince (ex Sarah McLachlan’s live version of “good enough” or “Fear”) .
• All true at EVERY volume level.
• All are NOT mutually exclusive – T,M,B evenly balanced at every level.
• You will WANT to pick up a new hobby in Jazz music.
• Modern music and vocals sound better than classical music, because of narrow sound stage. Still sounds brilliant, but not as impressive as modern music. Not a deficiency, a plus for modern and a neutral for classical.
• You will NEVER listen to these speakers past the 60% volume level, because they are just THAT powerful.
• No dock (like the zeppelin) is NOT a deficiency, because docks are obsolete with Airplay. OBSOLETE! This is completely wireless.
• Better than Bluetooth, because: 1) no signal degradation. 2) confusion about the different BT standards. Period.
• Airplay does NOT require turning on Bluetooth on your iphone. This is huge. It’s not just one step you’re saving. Airplay is always on. Period.
• Airplay can control multiple speakers from your computer; BOTH the A7 and on my computer speakers. Flexibility is a simple and powerful solution.
• The 3.5 headphone jack = optical toslink receptor. Huge. Can connect it to the TV and use it for big movies in a small space.
• A7 are expensive but worth every penny, and considering the quality of sound they represent comparatively to a larger system plus the smaller foot print, they are actually very good value for money.

23 of 23 people found this useful

I love this speaker. Clear sound and no distortions when played loudly. Additionally, perfect for my small apartment - warm sound, typical of B&W offerings.

Easy to set up.

Highly Recommended!

3 of 3 people found this useful